


Trial by Ice

by Savageseraph



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Crisis of Faith, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Loss, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageseraph/pseuds/Savageseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of Haven, it would be so easy to let the cold and dark take her.  So easy and so tempting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trial by Ice

Nyssa Trevelyan woke to cold and dark, which was surprising as she didn’t expect to wake at all. Each shallow breath made her ribs ache and the Mark on her palm sizzle with power. She hurt, but the pain reminded her she still lived. The dead, she hoped, were beyond pain, beyond fear. _The dead. So many dead._ Her eyes burned as her body tensed, and every muscle in her arm protested as she raised it to her mouth, biting down on her fist to stifle the sobs that would have echoed through the cavern she’d flung herself into before the avalanche could claim her.

Gradually, her sobs became little more than dry, gasping breaths that left her feeling hollowed out, empty. _Lost._ It would be so easy to lie here, let the cold and dark take her. _So easy and so tempting._

 _There is a difference between doing what is right and doing what is easy._ Cassandra’s voice was crisp as a midwinter wind off the Frostback Mountains. _Get up. You don’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for yourself._

Nyssa wished for the Seeker’s strength, her determination, her sense of purpose. Cassandra wouldn’t curl up into a ball of despair in a dark cavern and wish for death. Especially not when her death gave their enemy exactly what he wanted. Since Nyssa still lived, she had to assume Corypheus also survived.

If breathing was uncomfortable, rolling over on her side was excruciating. Nyssa dragged herself across the floor to a stand of rock, used it to pull herself up. By the time she got to her feet, she was covered with sweat and panting as if she’d just sprinted from the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes across the valley and up the mountain to Haven.

One unsteady step became two. Two became a dozen. Each hurt. Each made the one after it a little easier. Each carried her farther from the ruins of the Inquisition’s home.

###

Her staff survived the fall. She was still able to walk reasonably well if she leaned on it. Her Mark now seemed capable of hurting demons as well as closing Rifts. The flare in the sky before the dragon attacked meant not all perished with Haven. Her talent would keep her from freezing to death in this Maker-cursed storm that made it impossible for her to see more than a few paces ahead.

Nyssa gripped the scraps of hope the storm tried to scour out of her. She recited them, passionate as a penitent Sister did the Chant of Light. _Reasons._ She needed reasons to keep moving forward. Of course, without sun or moon or sky, without any visibility at all, she had no idea where forward was leading her. It could be deeper into the mountains. It could be off the side of one.

_Maker, guide my steps._

When she first stepped out of the caverns and into the storm, Nyssa tried counting her steps, but each time she skidded across a slick of ice or stumbled over something buried in the knee-deep snow, she lost count.

_You know, I wouldn’t have such an issue with snow if it wasn’t so cold. Or so wet. What it’s doing to my hair and boots is nothing short of criminal._

Dorian complained about the cold more than all the rest of them combined. She wished he was with her now, even if it meant a relentless stream of sarcasm.

Hours, footsteps, hope: the storm claimed them all just as it claimed the campsite she stumbled across. There was no telling if the cold ashes came from a campfire lit by Haven’s refugees or by hunters searching the hostile climes for ice bears or snow rams.

The Frostbacks jealously guarded their secrets. Would her fate become one of them?

###

While magic held off the cold and the deep ache in every muscle in her body, it couldn’t banish the dark thoughts that circled her, a flock of phantom ravens picking away at her determination. The flare meant that survivors escaped Haven, not that they made it off the mountain. Even if she fought free of the storm, that didn’t mean that Cassandra, Bull, and Dorian had. They stood with her, held off the red templars as she positioned the trebuchets, and that might well have gotten them killed.

 _She_ might have gotten them killed, and she wasn’t sure she could bear their loss.

_Really? It takes more than a moldy magister and his pet dragon to take down The Bull. You should know better._

Bull was always easy arrogance and casual menace. Would it be enough to save him? Was Dorian’s magic or Cassandra’s faith enough?

 _The people have faith in the Herald of Andraste._ Only Mother Giselle lectured her as passionately as Cassandra. _Shouldn’t the Herald have some faith in her companions?_

Did she have faith? Did she believe?

Nyssa stopped. Her fingers tightened around her staff. If she didn’t believe her friends could have lived when she did, then she was starting to believe she was special. _Chosen._ The Herald of bloody Andraste. She swallowed. That thought scared her more than facing down demons or dragons.

 _I’m not special._ Nyssa started moving. _My Mark is, but I’m the same woman I was before I got it. I’m a Trevelyan, a mage, a daughter, a friend._ She plowed through a drift that came up to her thighs. _I **am** going to set things right in Thedas, to shatter Corypheus’s plans, to see him turned to ashes and dust._

Nyssa didn’t notice the snow tapering off until she saw the campsite. The stones in the fire pit still held enough warmth to keep the snow from covering them. Someone was here not long ago, which meant they were still close. Even though weariness weighed heavily on her, Nyssa picked up her pace. It helped that the wind wasn’t trying to punch her backward two steps for every step she took. When she came around a bend, the mountain sloped down. There were campfires in the small valley. Campfires and tents and people.

_Thank the Maker._

She’d found Haven’s refugees.

###

Nyssa sprinted and skidded her way down the slope, but before she could get even halfway down, a group of people, bundled against the weather, started climbing up to meet her or to head her off before she reached the camp if she proved to be an enemy. She paused, threw back her hood.

“That’s her! She’s alive!”

 _Cullen! Thank the Maker._ Nyssa fell to her knees like a puppet whose strings were suddenly cut. The relief that surged through her was strong enough to make her feel light headed.

“We’re going to need a healer.” That from Cassandra. “Go back and let them know we’ve found her.” One of Leiliana’s scouts nodded, headed back to the camp.

The Seeker might have been wearing lighter armor, but it was Cullen who reached her first. He dropped to his knees, caught her before she could topple over. He smelled like metal and sweat and leather.

Nyssa touched his jaw with trembling fingers, ran them over his skin, along the stubble that prickled under her touch. She needed to _feel_ him, solid and warm and alive. “I knew you’d get them out.”

Cullen’s expression softened, and he wrapped his arms around her, touched his cheek to hers. “Maker’s breath, I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life.” The words were soft, and Nyssa might have missed them entirely if his lips weren’t so close to her ear. He pulled back quickly and cleared his throat. “You must be half frozen.”

Cassandra squatted down next to them. “You’re late.” The Seeker rested a hand on Nyssa’s shoulder, squeezed. The gesture saying what Cassandra wouldn’t or couldn’t. “We need to get you to a healer.” She straightened. “Commander, can you carry her?”

“Of course.” Cullen started to stand, but Nyssa shook her head.

“No.” She grabbed her staff, leaned on it as she struggled to her feet. Although she would have liked to shrug off Cullen’s hold, she was grateful for the support.

“But you’re injured. Exhausted.”

“And alive.” Nyssa cut in before Cassandra could continue. She was alive when so many others were not. “I walked this far. I can walk a bit farther.” She wasn’t sure if it was pride or penance that drove her. Probably both.

“As you wish.” Cassandra’s fingers tightened and relaxed around the hilt of her sword. “I’ll go ahead. To make sure they’re ready for you.”

Nyssa sighed softly as she watched the Seeker leave. She wondered if there was anything she could do to earn more than a moment’s approval from Cassandra.

“If you were a soldier, she’d never have questioned you.” Cullen’s arm was snug around her waist as they started making their way down at a more moderate pace.

“And you? Why aren’t you questioning me?”

Silence fell between them for so long Nyssa didn’t think Cullen meant to answer. When he did, he didn’t meet her gaze. “Perhaps I understand better than the Seeker how it feels when your world has crumbled around you and you need to prove to yourself that you didn’t shatter with it. That you _can_ go on.”

Nyssa swallowed around a lump in her throat. “I have to go on.” So much depended on her not breaking, even when the rest of the world was.

“But you don’t have to go on alone.” He did look at her then. “Remember that. I...” He shook his head slightly. “A lot of people forget that.”

They were close enough to the camp that Nyssa could see Varric arguing with Cassandra, Bull and Krem keeping watch at the perimeter, Vivienne doing her best to ignore the fact she in the woods instead of a manor, and Dorian making Josephine roll her eyes in exasperation. Cole helped Mother Giselle with the wounded, while Blackwall was doing his best to comfort Sera. Leiliana threw a raven in the air, watched her messenger fly away to the west. Only Solas was missing, but then he kept to himself on the best days.

Nyssa smiled. Her fingers found and tightened around Cullen’s hand. “Thank you, Commander.” It must have been the wind that brought a flush of color to his cheeks. “I won’t forget.”


End file.
